The World at the End of Time (20 page)

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Hell, of course I do. It’s the fifteenth of Winter, isn’t it?”

“It’s the day
New Argosy
was supposed to arrive,” his father told him. “I wasn’t the only one drinking last night. Everybody was feeling pretty lousy about it—only maybe I had more reason than most.”

“Sure,” Viktor said in disgust. “You’ve always got a reason. You can’t figure out why the stars flare, you don’t know what’s happening on Nebo, you’re all bent out of shape because of the spectral shifts—so you get drunk. Any reason’s a good reason to get a load on, isn’t it?”

“So I find it, yes,” his father said comfortably.

“Oh,
hell,
Dad! What’s the use of worrying about all those far-off things? Why can’t you get yourself straight and live in the life we’ve got, instead of screwing yourself around about things a million kilometers away that really don’t affect us here anyway?”

His father looked at him soberly and then poured himself another drink. “You don’t know everything, Vik,” he observed. “Do you know where Billy Stockbridge is?”

“Don’t have a clue! Don’t care. I’m talking about
you.
”

“He’s arranging for a town meeting tomorrow. We’ve got something to tell them, and I guess you’d say it really does affect us. We’ve been monitoring the insolation pretty carefully for about a month now, ever since Billy first saw something funny about it.”

“What’s funny?”

“I don’t actually mean ‘funny,’ ” his father said apologetically. “I’m afraid there isn’t any fun in it at all. We decided not to say anything until we were absolutely sure; we didn’t want everybody getting upset unless they absolutely had to—”

“Say anything about
what,
damn you?”

“About the insolation, Vik. It’s dropping. The sun’s radiating less heat and light every day. Pretty soon people will notice it. Pretty soon—”

He stopped and thought for a moment, then poured himself another drink.

“Pretty soon,” he said, holding the glass up to look at it, “it’s going to be getting cold around here.”

CHAPTER 9

Although Wan-To was vastly more than any human, he did have some human traits—even some that some humans might have considered endearing. He took the same joys in a job well done as any human hobbyist.

So when he finished putting his star-moving project together, he took a little time to watch it run. It gave him pleasure to see how well his matter analogues had carried out their tasks. The star clusters he had selected were all in motion now, and picking up speed. Each of the stars involved was dimming slightly—naturally enough, as much of each star’s energy was going into the manufacture of graviscalars rather than radiating away as light and heat. Each star carried with it its planets, moons, comets, and asteroids, all caught up in the graviscalar sweep. His five matter analogues were still there. He could talk to them and give them further instructions if he had any to give. But they had slowed to standby mode, waiting out the time until their program called on them to go into action again.

More than that, it was working! He saw with glee that his combative relatives had seen what he had wanted them to see and done just as he had planned for them to do. Of the five star groups Wan-To had sent on their way, two had already been zapped in toto by one or another of his colleagues, each single star torn apart. Two others were under attack. That amused Wan-To. Obviously somebody had come to the desired conclusion that he was in one of those fugitive stars, trying to make a getaway in that unlikely fashion. Well, they would give that up by and by, he was sure. The systems run by Doppels One and Four were now history, and those of Doppels Three and Five were being hit—though not at all with the first enthusiasm—and would no doubt soon be gone, as well.

The trouble was, he found that watching the project operate was not nearly as interesting as making it in the first place—just like any human hobbyist. Wan-To was beginning to feel bored.

And lonely.

When Wan-To couldn’t stand the loneliness anymore, the first one he called was Ftt. Ftt was a pretty safe opponent—if he really was an opponent—because he wasn’t all that powerful, or all that smart. Wan-To had created him toward the end of his efforts to make company for himself, by which time he had realized the dangers of making exact copies. Of course, even the handicapped ones might develop in ways he hadn’t planned, but he didn’t really think there was much to fear from Ftt.

It didn’t matter what he thought, in the event. There was no answer from Ftt; not from him, and not from either of the other two silent ones, either.

That gave Wan-To some pause. One of them, Pooketih, was hardly more threatening than little Ftt. But the remaining one of the silent group was Mromm, and he was something quite different. Wan-To had made him second, right after he had made Haigh-tik, and although he had begun to be cautious in how much of himself he copied into his offspring, Mromm still had a lot of shrewdness and powers not much less than Wan-To’s own. Mromm was very capable—almost as capable as Wan-To himself—of maintaining silence until he had a good target to aim at.

Wan-To was beginning to feel uneasy.

When he tried again it was to the dumbest and weakest of the lot, Wan-Wan-Wan, and Wan-Wan-Wan didn’t answer either. In his case, Wan-To considered, it wasn’t likely he was lying in wait. Something had happened to him. Wan-Wan-Wan had tried calling Wan-To, and if he didn’t respond now the chances were very good that Wan-Wan-Wan wasn’t with them anymore. That angered Wan-To; who of his offspring would be mean enough to kill off poor Wan-Wan-Wan?

The answer was, any of them. Given a good reason, he would have done it himself.

Wan-To persevered—cautiously—and by and by he did get some responses.

But when he finished talking to the ones who responded, he knew very little more than before. Merrerret and Hghumm said they were shocked that anyone would do anything like
that.
So did Floom-eppit, Gorrrk, and Gghoom-ekki, but they added that they suspected Wan-To himself.

Of course, they all put their own individual personalities into what they said. They did have individual personalities. Wan-To had made them that way. He had randomized some of the traits he had given them—a sort of Monte Carlo process, familiar to Earthly mathematicians—and so Floom-eppit was a joker, Hghumm a tedious bore, Gorrrk, an unstoppable talker if you gave him the chance. It took Wan-To a long time to get rid of Gorrrk, and then he faced the one he was most worried about.

Haigh-tik was his first-born, and the one most like himself.

That didn’t mean they were exactly the same. Even identical copies began to vary with time and the “chemistry” of the stars they inhabited; the dichotomy between nature and nurture was strong among Wan-To and his kind, just as on Earth. Wan-To was very cautious talking to Haigh-tik. After they had exchanged remarks on the flare stars (neither exactly accusing the other, but neither excluding the possibility, either), Haigh-tik offered:

“Have you noticed? Several groups of stars are moving.”

“Oh, yes,” Wan-To said smoothly. “I’ve been wondering what was going on.”

“Yes,” Haigh-tik said. There was silence for a moment, then he added, “All these things worry me. I’d hate it if we messed up this galaxy, too. I don’t want to move. I really like it where I am.”

“It’s a nice star, then?” Wan-To asked, not missing a beat. “I know you like the big, hot ones.”

“Why take a dwarf when you can have a giant?” Haigh-tik responded, with the equivalent of a shrug. “They’re much better. You have so much
space.
And so much
power.”

Wan-To gave the equivalent of a silent and unseen nod. He knew what Haigh-tik liked, all right. He had liked the same things himself, when he created Haigh-tik—before he had decided that moving to a fresh star every few million years, when the big, bright ones were bound to go unstable, was too much trouble. He offered, “But, tell me, Haigh-tik, are you sure you’ll get out before it collapses? Those O types burn up all their hydrogen so fast, and then—”

“Who said anything about an O?” Haigh-tik sneered.

Wan-To’s “heart” leaped with exultation, but he kept his tone level. “Any of the big, hot young ones—they can all trap you.”

“Not this one,” Haigh-tik boasted. “I’ve just moved into it; it’s got a good long time yet. Longer,” he added, in a tone that fell just short of being menacing, “than a lot of us are going to have, if all this sniping at each other doesn’t stop.”

As soon as they had “hung up,” Wan-To, highly pleased, began a search of his star catalogue. What he was looking for was a star of the kind human astronomers called a “Wolf-Rayet”—even hotter and younger than an O—and the newest of that kind he could find.

Then, with a certain sentimental regret, he summoned his clouds of graviphotons and graviscalars and sent them swarming to the likeliest candidate. Poor Haigh-tik! But Wan-To was only doing what had to be done, he reassured himself.

If there was one thing that could frighten Wan-To it was the thought of his own extinction. Stars, galaxies, even the universe itself—they all had fixed lifetimes, and he could accept the loss of any of them with equanimity. If all of his comrades were blown up he could stand that, too—he could always hive off new sections of himself for company (being very careful about what powers the new ones had, this time).

He thought hard for a time about that unpleasant subject. Wan-To was a great student of astrophysics and cosmology. It wasn’t an abstract science to him. It was the stuff his life was made of. He understood the physics of the great and small . . .

And he could foresee a time when things could begin to get quite unpleasant for him, even if he survived the present squabbles.

When that particular Wolf-Rayet star was history, Wan-To (metaphorically crossing his nonexistent “fingers”) called Haigh-tik on the ERP communicator again. And was very disappointed when Haigh-tik answered.

Haigh-tik had lied to him about his star!

But Wan-To saw the humor of it, and was amused—yes, and a little proud of his first-born offspring, too.

And Pal Sorricaine got his wish. Earthly astronomers did, in fact, adopt the term “Sorricaine-Mtiga stars” to describe that class of anomalous objects . . . right up to the time when their own Sun became one.

CHAPTER 10

Quinn Sorricaine-Mcgann was not only the first “legitimate” child of Viktor and Reesa—they nicknamed her “Nab,” for “Not a Bastard”—she was also the last. Most of Reesa made a complete recovery, but she could never have another child. But considering Newmanhome’s prospective future as little Quinn was growing up, neither Reesa nor Viktor was sure they wanted another.

Newmanhome wasn’t a paradise anymore. It was getting definitely colder. The growing season on South Continent had shortened, and that was the end of spring wheat and long-ripening soy. The uniform of the day had changed, even in the settlement: no more shorts and shirts all year around. It was sweaters and shoes, and if it had not been for the flood of hot geothermal water that came from the wells—more and more of them every year, as the colonists foresaw the increasing need for power as well as heat—their homes would have been chilly.

The skies at night were woefully changed. The stars had slid about the sky and changed color: In one direction they were definitely blue-white, in the other yellowish red, and in between there was a growing band of no stars at all, except for the handful that were traveling with them.

On Quinn’s thirteenth birthday—she was then the equivalent of a healthy Earthly seven-year-old—her father was just returning from Christmas Island with a shipload of evacuees; the Archipelago wasn’t fit for human beings anymore. He was anxious to be there for the birthday, but storms had delayed them. It was a nasty trip: high waves, three hundred refugees in space that really wasn’t meant to hold more than a quarter of that, and most of them seasick most of the way. As he entered the harbor at Homeport snow was falling, and the whole city was covered in white.

He hurried to his house and found Quinn happily making a snowman, while the little girl’s aunt, Edwina, stood by. Edwina was a grown-up young woman now, with a family of her own. They kissed, but Viktor was frowning. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. After Edwina had married Billy Stockbridge, Pal’s disciple, the two of them had emigrated to South Continent, where there was a need for workers in drilling geothermal wells.

“They closed the project down,” Edwina said. “The way the weather’s going, it wouldn’t have been producing power in time to save any of the crops.”

Viktor nodded soberly. South Continent had been the first part of Newmanhome’s inhabited areas to feel the effects of the cooling sun. Winter came early. The vast farmlands were fertile as always, but when a killing frost came the farms died. “Where’s Reesa?”